Under a lone street lamp

Photographers will do all sorts of things to get the picture they want. For weeks on end, Reuters' Tim Wimborne would return regularly to an ordinary-looking streetlamp in a park in Sydney, watching and waiting, looking for just the right "less is more" shot.

2 May 2012. Sydney, Australia. Reuters/Tim Wimborne

The spot under the streetlamp is popular with personal trainers, and Wimborne would come around three times a week, taking pictures of them and their clients.

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"I’m not looking for any particular woman, but I do always look for the same lamp."
Tim Wimborne, Reuters Photographer

Since mid-March I have developed a new habit. Not a bad habit, but a pretty regular one.

About three nights a week, I drive down to a local park near the harbour’s edge and park by the side of the road, looking for a woman under a street light. I’m not looking for any particular woman, but I do always look for the same lamp.

It’s a bit like being a John searching for a good time with a lady of the night. But no one would suspect that here – I’m in a ritzy part of town.

This habit started when, after testing a new kit, one evening I was on the middle of the Sydney Harbour Bridge and a potential picture far below caught my eye.

It was a simple frame with a composition that summed up the phrase “less is more”: a woman and her personal trainer, boxing under a lone streetlight. It was just the two of them, their gloves and their shadows, with nothing else around them. But by the time I got into position, they’d moved on.

The spot is a popular place for personal trainers to come and take their nine-to-five office worker clients through their paces, so I figured these guys were regulars. And so started my evening sorties.

These evening forays would see me sitting in my car or on park benches, walking around the park, strolling up on the bridge above, bringing my kids or stopping by after laps at the local swimming pool. Every time I’d have a camera over my shoulder, with the exposure set to catch that image.

I’d see folks exercising in groups, walking their dogs, taking evening strolls, going jogging… The list goes on. After a while, I’d chat to the personal trainers who did their job in various parts of the park, trying to find out who worked where, who gave solo lessons and how the weather dictated where, when and how they trained.

I narrowed down the best times and days of the week, and I hunted for my shot.